2024

The CST-100 Starliner Calypso spacecraft landing (Image NASA)

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A few hours ago, Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner Calypso spacecraft landed at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, ending its Boe-CFT (Boeing Crew Flight Test) mission. Unlike the previous American spacecraft, this one doesn’t splash down in the ocean but lands on the ground. It was an automated return trip while Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams, who had arrived at the International Space Station on June 6 aboard the Calypso, remained on the Station.

Kuiper Belt Objects (Image created with NightCafé)

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An article accepted for publication in the “Planetary Science Journal” reports the detection of 239 candidate trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). NASA’s New Horizons Kuiper Belt search team discovered the candidates using the Subaru telescope in Hawaii. Estimates indicate that the candidates are located at distances up to 90 times that of the Earth from the Sun. This supports the theory that the Kuiper Belt is wider than expected or that there’s a second Kuiper Belt further out.

The Sentinel-2C satellite blasting off atop a Vega rocket (Image courtesy ESA-CNES-ARIANESPACE/Optique vidéo du CSG–S. Martin)

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A few hours ago, the Sentinel-2C satellite of the Copernicus / GMES program blasted off from the Kourou base, French Guiana, atop a Vega rocket. After about 57 minutes, the satellite regularly separated from the rocket’s last stage and started sending signals. A few hours later it started deploying its solar panels. After a period of testing, it will replace the Sentinel-2A satellite, launched on June 23, 2015. This is the last launch of the original version of the Vega rocket.

An image from the CEERS survey (Image NASA, ESA, CSA, Steve Finkelstein (UT Austin))

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An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal” reports the results of a study of primordial galaxies that seemed too massive for their age, concluding that it was actually the light generated by the activity of their supermassive black holes that created a wrong impression. A team of researchers led by Katherine Chworowsky, a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin), examined observations conducted with the James Webb Space Telescope as part of the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) survey to reach these conclusions.

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An article published in the journal “Nature Astronomy” reports a possible reconstruction of the system of the ultra-cool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 that led to the current configuration of its seven rocky planets. A team of researchers examined their orbits and in particular their orbital resonances, concluding that the planets formed in two steps in a protoplanetary disk divided into two parts. Initially, this led to the formation of two planetary subsystems and only later did planetary migrations occur with influences between various planets that led to the current situation.